Dead Christians Society

Available here is a useful short review/book note of Adrienne Israel’s biography of Amanda Berry Smith.

John Newton’s biographer, Bruce Hindmarsh, tells us that Newton wrote his own autobiography (The Life & Spirituality of John Newton: An Authentic Narrative) very much under the inspiration of a contemporary genre: the sensational adventure tale.

But that wasn’t the only genre Newton had in mind as he wrote his tale. Newton was writing at just the time when a group of philosophically minded writers were creating that blockbuster of all written forms: the novel. And he didn’t miss this development at all–in fact, he used many of the techniques and terms of the new novel form, whose philosophical underpinning was a major and much-ignored Enlightenment “creed”: sentimentalism.

The other day, as I sketched some of the historical context for Newton’s account for our “patron saints” class, I mused on this conjunction of the sentimental novel and the evangelical conversion narrative–for Newton’s “authentic narrative” was hugely popular and much emulated among evangelicals of the late 18th and 19th centuries, and his use of sentimentalist conventions influenced, it seems to me, all conversion narratives to come.

Sentimentalism was not the hankie-wringing, insincere thing that word implies now. And it contained a conviction about how we know truth that was and is strikingly “non-modern.”

(Some of what follows is reworked from a conversation on another part of this blog–that’s just the kind of creative synergy I’d hoped would happen when I started it! For more, click here.):

The question of whether two people sharing an account of their experience with each other can communicate helpful truth is closely related to a crucial question posed by postmodern philosophers: can we learn anything helpful across cultures, or is our very language so conditioned by our own “in-group’s” assumptions about where authority and power are to be found, that positive dialogue is impossible?

I’m not going to force an answer to this question, but I will describe an important genre of literature that Newton’s Authentic Narrative owes a great deal to. That is the genre of the “sentimental” narrative, invented in the 18^th century.

For a later example, think of the novels of Charles Dickens.

When we read Charles Dickens (remember high school English class?), we get two very strong impressions:

(1) we become emotionally engaged in the characters, and

(2) we sense that Dickens is pursuing a moral, spiritual agenda through painting those characters for us.

Both of these are true, and both of them rest on this single assumption about human nature and the importance of human emotion that in fact led a group of eighteenth-century philosophers and writers to invent the novel as a genre. But again, sentimental narratives could be novels, but they could also be history books or biographies.

“Sentimentalism” did not carry the meaning then that it does now (denoting over-wrought, insincere emotional expression). No, the term was invented to describe a coherent set of philosophical ideas about emotions and morality. The sentimentalists assumed, first, that all people share certain basic experiences and emotions, and second, that we can become better people by hearing the stories of other people and having our own emotions (hearts) shaped by those stories.

And that’s the basic contention that postmodern theorists would disagree with. To the postmodern theorist, even our emotions—which we are so used to thinking of as pure, unconditioned experiences—are constructed according to scripts learned from a particular social, cultural group. In other words—and I have seen this seriously argued in a piece of scholarship in the field of anthropology—an East Indian, or French Canadian, or Mexican man who has lost a child would not know how to experience grief unless a sort of social script for grief had been taught to him by what he observed other people in his social group doing as he grew up—and maybe sometimes by explicit teaching too. This is what is known as the strong constructionist assumption in the social sciences.

However, within the past decade or so, social scientists in the new field of emotions research have begun to conclude that there are, in fact, universal human emotions, surrounding certain basic human experiences like the loss of a child, marriage or its equivalent, and so forth. Even though these emotions may be scripted in different ways in different societies, there are discernible similarities across all cultures in what people experience in those basic life moments and situations.

Whether novel, history book, or biography, the sentimental narrative describes people’s emotional experiences in a way that is intended to form the emotions—and the minds, and the moral and spiritual beings—of readers. The sentimentalists were not hack writers, they were sophisticated philosophers who believed that when we encounter other people’s life experiences in print, we are changed by that encounter.

And if this is true, then it seems reasonable to assume that we can learn something from other people’s life experiences—including their experiences of the Triune God.

So, let’s review:

Modernists have tended to dismiss emotion and experience as illegitimate or at least second-class categories of knowledge: they have sought, instead, ordered systems of rational truth—coherent explanations marked by logical sequences and given universal force to explain all things at all times. This is knowledge on the modern, scientific model.

Postmodernists have tended to dismiss emotion and experience as being just as illegitimate sources of knowledge as the supposedly universal dictates of rational proof and rational system—and for the same reason: each social and cultural group has such different assumptions and agendas that it is impossible to communicate across groups—and this affects us right down to the level of our emotions.

But certain Enlightenment thinkers–the early evangelicals and the sentimentalists, both groups drinking from the well of the empiricist John Locke–believed that one’s experiences (and by extension, one’s emotions, and by another extension, other people’s experiences and emotions) are a strong, helpful source of knowledge. And this assumption ruled not only 18^th-century but also 19^th-century reading habits of both secular and Christian readers: The three top genres in those centuries were novels, biographies, and histories—because it was assumed that what you learned in reading those books was valuable, experiential knowledge that, when you learned it, could transform you in ways mere rational argumentation could not achieve.

So what happened? How did this sort of knowledge—what other Christians have called “heart knowledge”—get marginalized in Western culture, including evangelicalism?

First, the hard sciences, with their modernist project of rational control, completed their rise to supreme authority in Western culture. Science had helped us achieve so much material progress that it seemed natural to rely on it in every other sphere of human life as well: from the historical criticism of the Bible to the Darwinian explanations of social life to the Freudian explanations of our inner lives. By 1900 (exaggeration of precision here, but work with me), ministers, biographers, and novelists had lost their authority; scientists in lab coats were the new supreme authorities of Western life. If you wanted people to take you seriously in the public sphere of the marketplace and the political arena, you had to deal in rational proofs and scientific methods.

Second, by (around) 1900, the positive late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century movement of sentimentalism had gone into a permanent, decadent tailspin. With experience and emotion increasingly rejected as authoritative roads to certain kinds of truth and marginalized to the realm of leisure and entertainment, the late Victorians had been left indulging in ‘sentiment for the sake of sentiment’—all the swooning, hankie-wringing and self-indulgent, but insincere and manipulative sorts of emotional expression that we tend to think of when the word ‘Victorian’ comes up in conversation.

So from the late 1800s on, if you wanted to prove that you were a real man—or even, in the public forum, a real woman—you had to make obligatory statements distancing yourself from this decadent sentimentalism.

Meanwhile, social and economic forces conspired to intensify this emotional distancing: As Western society (certainly at least American society) became more and more complex—commerce, politics, and social services all having to operate on a more and more massive scale—it seemed increasingly unlikely that social solutions would be found in the old, charmed and overlapping circles of church-town-family with their face-to-face relationships.

By the opening years of the new century, no longer could you write a sentimental novel like Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1850s nation-changing blockbuster Uncle Tom’s Cabin and expect people to change their hearts—and thereby their actions (an apocryphal anecdote has President Lincoln meeting Stowe and saying, “So you’re the little lady who started the big war.”) Charles M. Sheldon’s 1890s novel In His Steps, with its interwoven storylines of Spirit-led personal change and its personal thumb-rule of “What would Jesus do,” was one of the last of these sort of narratives to command mass sales and the serious ethical as well as spiritual attention of the American people: In the public sphere of the new modern world, personal character and human relationships were forced to take an increasingly distant back seat to efficiency and system.

From the Progressive Era on (early 1900s), the watchwords for social improvement became Science and Progress. The newly businesslike, unemotional personal style that had already emerged partly in reaction to late-Victorian decadent sentimentalism gained cultural dominance. So we get Teddy Roosevelt—the man’s man. And the muscular Christianity of the YMCA—all healthful exercise, discipline, grit, and courage. Everything soft and sentimental and . . . well, it was assumed, ‘feminine’ . . . might still be OK for the home—the woman’s sphere, but it wouldn’t cut it in the marketplace—the man’s sphere.

Then came two world wars and the British example of the stiff upper lip—the need to keep ourselves together in the face of daily reports of tragedy. Well, you can see how the emotional culture of a whole nation can change through factors such as these.

So what we are doing here in this class is in a sense very subversive. Just by reading biographies—which are by their nature accounts of other people’s experiences and emotional states, as well as of their ideas—we are going back to an earlier kind of knowledge that sits uncomfortably both with modern and with postmodern thought.

And this brings us back to Newton’s narrative. This story was written in the form of personal letters, with warm greetings and relational rhetoric at the front of almost every chapter. Would it surprise you if I told you that this “epistolary” form was exactly the same form used by the first writers of sentimental novels—like Samuel Richardson, author of the blockbuster novel Pamela? And look back at the lavish descriptions Newton gives at various points along the way of his inner states.

Remember “Rhapsody”—the chapter of Shaftesbury’s book Characteristics that Newton fell in love with and nearly memorized? That was a piece of sentimental philosophy, although in that case anti-Christian.

What about the way Newton wove his courtship and marriage into his account? All of this description of emotional experiences was intended to change the hearts of those who read it. And the immense popularity and power of this account—the many reprints, the way it got passed around from friend to friend for decades and even into the next century—this tells us that there was space in that culture for people to read and be influenced by this kind of narrative.

So the question is, in this postmodern time, when we have become disillusioned with the modernist quest for rational mastery, is there again a “social space” for this kind of account? I throw that open to you all.

A friend suggested my “eye-ease” green wasn’t so easy on the eyes. Is this new look better?

What helped a disabled woman (prolific hymnwriter Fanny Crosby) and a poor black woman (Amanda Berry Smith) exert a special power over middle-class white Victorian Christians seeking spiritual leadership?

Today a friend brought to my attention this well-written critical review by Anne Blue Wills of Edith Blumhofer’s recent biography of Fanny Crosby. A quick clip:

“Aided by [a] richly detailed [historical] background, Blumhofer presents compelling readings of Crosby’s most famous lyrics. The deep contextualization helps Blumhofer avoid sentimentalizing the hymnwriter as the blind poetess of legend. She instead depicts Crosby as an independent-minded participant in a vibrant (and profitable) cultural phenomenon.”

This review triggered in me the question in my first paragraph, above–in particular, a throwaway comment by Wills on the “curiosity factor” of Crosby’s disability, suggesting that this, along with her womanhood, may have helped her gain the profile she did as a songwriter. In short, I see real similarities between Crosby and Amanda Berry Smith–and not just because they were “curiosities.” For my complete response to Anne (a colleague from our days at Duke), click here:

Anne,

What a splendidly written review. I can see your critical apparatus is still ticking on all cylinders.

I write you in the spirit of conversation, grabbing hold of one statement you made:

“Blumhofer claims that Crosby’s blindness was more determinative for her life’s direction than her gender. It made her a curiosity and thus opened many doors. Nevertheless, a tantalizing question remains: How might 19th-century conceptions of both disability and womanhood have reinforced one another in Crosby’s case?”

I _did_ find this question tantalizing, along with your use of the term “curiosity.” It reminded me of the case of Amanda Berry Smith.

In the course of preparing an extensive reading from Smith’s _Autobiography_ for a class I’m teaching (“Patron and Matron Saints for Postmoderns”) at Bethel Seminary, I have been again and again running across Smith’s descriptions of folks “gawking” at her.

And so, to your “disability and womanhood,” Smith’s case leads me to add two more social markers that could work in a would-be Victorian-era minister’s favor: non-white race and lower class. And I have thought a bit about what these four things have in common: Each marker had both a “curiosity factor” (at least when the person put themselves forward into public ministry) and something else–a kind of spiritual cachet.

If you’ll indulge me for a moment, take a look at Smith’s account of how the white, middle-class folk at a particular holiness camp meeting early in her public career (I would guess in the late 1860s or early 1870s; it was at Kennebunk) gawked at her:

“It was one Sunday. There had been a great crowd all day, and everywhere I would go a crowd would follow me. If I went into a tent they would surround it and stay till I came out, then they would follow me. Sometimes I would slip into a tent away from them. Then I would see them peep in, and if they saw me they would say, ‘Oh! here is the colored woman. Look!’ Then the rush! So after dinner I managed to get away. I went into a friend’s tent and said, ‘Let me lie down here out of sight a little while.’

“‘Yes,’ she said, ‘the people do not seem to have any manners. I never saw anything like it.’

“So I got down on the floor under the foot of the bed, and I could see them as they would pass by, and hear them say, ‘Where is she, the colored woman?’

“‘I don’t know, but I think she is in here,’ someone would say. But I kept still. . . .”

[Then a bit later, in conversation with her friend Sister Clark:]

“‘The people have followed me about all day, and have stared at me. Somehow I feel so bad and uncomfortable.’

[She was so disturbed by this sense of being a "gazing stock" that she went to prayer. And God, as she told it, reminded her of a crowd she had seen on Broadway, standing and looking at a window containing a picture:]

“‘You heard the remarks of the people [God is speaking this to Smith], and the approvals and disapprovals.’

“‘Yes,’ I said.

“‘Did that picture say anything?’

“‘No.’

“‘Did it injure its beauty?’

“‘No, Lord; I see it.’

“I got up and went on double quick to the tent. I praised the Lord. I laughed, and cried, and shouted. It was so simple, and yet so real. The next morning at the eight o’clock meeting I got up and shouted, ‘I have got the victory! Everybody come and look at me! Praise the Lord!’

“I was free as a bird.”

After that freeing revelation, Smith evangelized, exhorted, testified, and sang more and more at these camp meetings, and also in England, Africa, and India. She had learned to put up with her status as–as you put it–a “curiosity.” More than this, she clearly began to use it to her advantage (“Everybody come and look at me!”). In fact, in her case, I believe that her blackness compounded with her femaleness to make her a “curiosity.”

Moreover, in the white, middle- and upper-middle class circles she moved and ministered in, her low social status also contributed to her public identity as a curiosity (she proclaimed herself “the washerwoman evangelist”).

What do all three of these factors–low class, black race, femaleness–share with physical disability (along with Crosby, I think of Ellen G. White in one phase of her ministry)? Just this: all four were associated with low social power, or indeed powerlessness. And all–not just womanhood and blackness, but poverty and disability–were romanticized by the Victorians. (A complicated fifth factor might be childhood.)

More than this, should we say that these human conditions were not just romanticized but “spiritualized”? Because this, I think, is the punchline: to middle-class conservative Victorian Christians, on top of the world in an economically vibrant West, but feeling guilty and spiritually alienated about that status, powerlessness was next to godliness.

This Victorian spiritual principle could easily be shown, I think: It was not just _any_ curiosity factor that gave a person a boost in public ministry like that experienced by Smith and Crosby (and, I think, White)–rather, only those factors that promised to take “self” out of the picture and allow God to flow through the individual in His Own Power.

In a highly self-assertive, modernizing era, as Hopkins wrote, “all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell.” The Victorians needed Stowe’s Uncle Tom, Dickens’s Tiny Tim or Little Nell, and the Washerwoman Evangelist and the Blind Songstress–powerless people (theoretically) untouched by that smudge and smell–who could “leverage” (tee hee) their position of powerlessness to reach out and return other people to the Holy Spirit’s “warm breast and . . . ah! bright wings.”

We’ve known for a long time that Victorians put women and children in that “more spiritual” category, turning to them as brokers or ambassadors to bring them into the presence of the _true_ Lord of creation. Some have pointed out that non-whites could also serve this function (e.g. in Stowe’s _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_)–and in Smith, we see this effect amplified by her low class status. And in Crosby, we seem to have a clear case of a physically disabled person serving the same function, for the same reason.

Well, now that I’ve written this, it seems rather obvious! But maybe for those of us working in the borderlands of cultural history and theology, there is more to be learned and said on power and powerlessness in American Christianity.

In any case, I’ll shut up now. Three years without a research outlet, and any excuse makes me go off like this.

Peace,
Chris

During my years at Christian History & Biography magazine (formerly Christian History), I kept up a regular flow of online newsletters, posted at the magazine’s site. Here are the linked titles of the 2002 newsletters, with the most recent coming first:

 
I’m Dreaming of a Victorian Christmas
An ageless story reminds us of the values the Victorians can still teach us.
By Chris Armstrong
Posted December 13, 2002

Advent: Close Encounters of a Liturgical Kind
‘Tis the season when even the free-ranging revivalist pulls up a chair to the table of historic liturgy.
By Chris Armstrong
Posted December 6, 2002

“Tell Billy Graham: ‘The Jesus People love him.’”
How evangelism’s senior statesman helped the hippies “tune in, turn on to God.” Part II of the story of Billy Graham and the origins of Christian youth culture.
By Chris Armstrong
Posted November 29, 2002

Dig that Billy Graham Cat!
How the grand old man of evangelism helped create Christian youth culture in the zoot-suit era.
By Chris Armstrong
Posted November 22, 2002

An “Ordinary Saint” in Wartime
William Wilberforce saw two long charitable campaigns through, even in war’s distracting shadow
By Chris Armstrong
Posted November 8, 2002

No Sex [Before Marriage], Please … We’re Christian
Miss America preaches a 2000-year-old message.
By Chris Armstrong
Posted October 25, 2002

Timeline of the Spirit-gifted
Before Moody, Finney, Edwards, and Mather came a long line of Catholic and Orthodox believers reputed to enjoy “the promise of the Father.”
By Chris Armstrong
Posted October 11, 2002

Do Non-Charismatics ‘Do’ Holy Spirit Baptism?
Ask D. L. Moody, Charles G. Finney, Jonathan Edwards, or Cotton Mather.
By Chris Armstrong
Posted October 4, 2002

9/11, History, and the True Story
Wartime authors J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis help put 9/11 in perspective.
by Chris Armstrong
Posted September 13, 2002

Evangelicalism’s Decades of Fire
New historical survey highlights twentieth-century evangelicalism’s impassioned middle decades.
by Chris Armstrong
Posted September 6, 2002

The Stakes of Public Education: A Protestant Bishop Speaks Out
Why concerned parents should read the 17th-century Moravian educational reformer Jan Amos Comenius
by Chris Armstrong
Posted August 30, 2002

Spurgeon on Jabez
What history’s most prolific preacher said, in 1871, about the Prayer of Jabez.
by Chris Armstrong
Posted August 23, 2002

How the Early Church Saw Heaven
The first Christians had very specific ideas about who they would meet in the afterlife.
by Chris Armstrong
Posted August 9, 2002

Divvying up the Most Sacred Place
Emotions have historically run high as Christians have staked their claims to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre
by Chris Armstrong
Posted August 2, 2002

Legacy of an Ancient Pact
Why do Christians still chafe under restrictions in some Muslim nations? It all started with Umar.
by Chris Armstrong
Posted July 26, 2002

During my years at Christian History & Biography magazine (formerly Christian History), I kept up a regular flow of online newsletters, posted at the magazine’s site. Here are the linked titles of the 2003 newsletters, with the most recent coming first:

Can Anything Good Come Out of New England?
Evangelical revival in the land of the liberal Brahmins may not be as historically odd as we suppose.
by Chris Armstrong
Posted December 12, 2003

300-Year-Old Man Returns to Lead His Church
Evangelicals need this grandfather figure more than ever.
by Chris Armstrong
Posted December 5, 2003

Thanks, Da Vinci Code …
… for sending us back to Christianity’s “founding fathers”—and the Bible we share with them
by Chris Armstrong
Posted November 14, 2003

Not a Mercy but a Sin
The modern push for euthanasia is a push against a two-millenniums-old Christian tradition.
by Chris Armstrong
Posted October 31, 2003

The Next Pope: An African?
Sixty-four years ago, the Roman Catholic Church consecrated its first black African bishop. Is it time now for the next step?
by Chris Armstrong
Posted October 17, 2003

Our Brothers and Sisters, the Episcopalians
The Episcopal Church needs our help. Here’s why we should give it.
by Chris Armstrong
Posted October 3, 2003
Readers’ responses to this article

Six “Faith-based” Stories and a Moral
Are Christian social ministries worth fighting for?
by Chris Armstrong
Posted September 26, 2003

Learning From the Other 9/11
Words kill. So teachers, watch what you say.
By Chris Armstrong
Posted September 12, 2003

J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis: A Legendary Friendship
A new book reveals how these two famous friends conspired to bring myth and legend—and Truth—to modern readers.
by Chris Armstrong
Posted August 29, 2003

The Ten Commandments, How Deep Our Debt
The words of the Decalogue run like a river through not only the church but also English and American history.
by Chris Armstrong
Posted August 22, 2003

College Sports: Prodigal Son of “Muscular Christianity”
In the wake of a basketball scandal at a prominent Christian university, we take time to remember the Christian roots of college athletics.
by Chris Armstrong
Posted August 15, 2003

Where Have All the Classics Gone?
These days it’s a triumph when a movie is simply inoffensive. But we can do better than that!
by Chris Armstrong
Posted July 11, 2003

The African Lion Roars in the Western Church
Anglican liberals are fretting, conservatives rejoicing, and all are scrambling to their history books: whence this new evangelical force on the world scene?
by Chris Armstrong
Posted June 27, 2003
Readers’ responses to this article

How John Wesley Changed America
Why should Wesley’s 300th birthday be a red-letter day on this side of the ocean?
by Chris Armstrong
Posted June 20, 2003

Did Eric Rudolph Act in a “Tradition of Christian Terror”?
A historian considers the evidence of the Crusades and the Inquisition.
by Chris Armstrong
Posted June 13, 2003
Readers’ responses to this article

When World Leaders Pray, Part II
Tony Blair’s spin-doctors worried when he recently “outed” himself as a Christian. But what impact has Christianity really had on our leaders?
by Chris Armstrong
Posted May 30, 2003

The Day the Ransoming Began
A gripping new book details the first American missionary hostage crisis, over 100 years ago.
by Chris Armstrong
Posted May 23, 2003

When World Leaders Pray
Some observers are upset with Tony Blair’s recent public avowal of faith. But what impact has Christianity really had on our leaders?
by Chris Armstrong
Posted May 16, 2003

Got Your “Spiritual Director” Yet?
The roots of a resurgent practice, plus 14 books for further study.
by Chris Armstrong and Steven Gertz
Posted May 2, 2003

The Goodness of Good Friday
An unhappy celebration—isn’t that an oxymoron?
by Chris Armstrong
Posted April 18, 2003

Top Ten Entry Points to Christian History
Some enjoyable ways to get the most out of the work of church historians.
by Chris Armstrong
Posted April 11, 2003

Top Ten Christian History ‘Starter Books’
Get rooted in the Christian past with these riveting reads.
by Chris Armstrong
Posted April 4, 2003

Top Ten Reasons to Read Christian History
War’s reports deluge us every hour. Why should we read the “old news” of Christian history?
by Chris Armstrong
Posted March 28, 2003

How Can War Be Christian?
Augustine’s “just war” theory has guided the church through many conflicts.
by Chris Armstrong
Posted March 21, 2003

Saint J. R. R. the Evangelist
Tolkien wanted his Lord of the Rings to echo the “Lord of Lords”—but do we have ears to hear?
by Chris Armstrong
Posted March 14, 2003

Heresy, Salvation, and Jack the Ripper
Why heresy trials will have to do, until something better comes along.
by Chris Armstrong
Posted February 28, 2003

Play Me That Hot Puritan Love Song
A little-read book of the Bible reminds us of the astonishing intimacy we enjoy with Christ.
by Chris Armstrong
Posted February 14, 2003

Sex, Politics, and the Bible
Some words just don’t mean what they used to …
By Chris Armstrong
Posted January 24, 2003

Caveat Gyrator (Elvis Priestly, Part II)
So you’ve got an evangelistic pop-culture act ready for prime time. Here’s a historical pause for reflection.
by Chris Armstrong
Posted January 17, 2003

From Oratorios to Elvis
Pop culture has been coming to a church near you for hundreds of years.
by Chris Armstrong
Posted January 10, 2003

The Christian DNA of Modern Genetics
Though open to frightening ethical abuse, genetics has been a Christian vocation since Gregor Mendel did his famous pea-plant experiments in the mid-nineteenth century.
by Chris Armstrong
Posted January 3, 2003

During my years at Christian History & Biography magazine (formerly Christian History), I kept up a regular flow of online newsletters, posted at the magazine’s site. Here are the linked titles of the 2004-05 newsletters, with the most recent coming first:

When Theology Comes Alive
Living theology: that’s what the 17th-century Pietists wanted to see. And so they invented church history.
By Chris Armstrong
posted July 8, 2005

How to Pray for Our Troops
This Veteran’s Day, let’s commend our men and women of the services to the God who brings good even from the most evil circumstances.
By Chris Armstrong
Posted November 5, 2004
Romanticism Gone to Seed—Part II
Have the holiness and Pentecostal movements really been “hyper-vertical” and “anti-domestic”?
By Chris Armstrong
Posted September 30, 2004

The Roots of Pentecostal Scandal: Romanticism Gone to Seed
The sexual stumblings of prominent ministers point to a hidden flaw in Pentecostal spirituality.
By Chris Armstrong
Posted September 16, 2004

The Friends of The Christ of The Passion
Popular interest in the person of Jesus is widening to include his closest friends. But who were these people, really?
By Chris Armstrong
Posted September 2, 2004
Readers’ responses to this article

Gutenberg: A God’s-Eye View
The rise, fall, and redemption of the Father of the Information Age.
By Chris Armstrong
Posted August 26, 2004
Readers’ responses to this article

“Knock, knock.” “Who’s there?” “The Amish.”
UPN’s “Amish In the City” shows us our modern selves in a mirror that is positively medieval.
By Chris Armstrong
Posted July 29, 2004
Readers’ responses to this article

All of Christian History in 6 Hours
This audio tour de force is strong meat for a mature Christian audience.
By Chris Armstrong
Posted July 22, 2004

Testify!
A glimpse inside the world of “holiness testimony,” through the story of an ex-slave woman evangelist.
by Chris Armstrong
Posted July 01, 2004

To Spank or Not To Spank?
A 6th-century abbot and a group of 17th-century Calvinist “divines” weigh in on the issue
by Chris Armstrong
Posted June 24, 2004

For All the Saints
A new book reminds us to get our heads and hearts together, in the company of the “cloud of witnesses.”
by Chris Armstrong
Posted June 17, 2004

The Pagan-Buster
How a brilliant monk laid the groundwork for Christian Europe.
by Chris Armstrong
Posted June 10, 2004

Do Nigerian Miracle Ministries Discredit the Faith?
The spiritual dynamism of West African Christianity is now well known even in the West. Do credibility-stretching, highly publicized miracles discredit what God is doing in that region?
by Chris Armstrong
Posted May 21, 2004
Readers’ responses to this article

Holy America, Phoebe!
It swept across church lines, transforming ’s urban landscape with its rescue missions and storefront churches. Yet today, the “holiness movement” and its charismatic woman leader are all but forgotten.
by Chris Armstrong
Posted May 14, 2004
Readers’ responses to this article

The Lord of the Rings, The Passion of the Christ, and the Highway of Holiness
Has God been “re-routing” us through popular movies, books, and cultural events?
by Chris Armstrong
Posted May 07, 2004
Readers’ responses to this article

Mel Gibson’s Next Act: “The Man of the Passion”?
Thousands want Mel to make his next movie about a famous medieval friar.
by Chris Armstrong
Posted April 30, 2004
Readers’ responses to this article

St. Mugg’s Wrestling Prophets, Part II: The “Weird Little Dane”
How a struggling soul built a bridge to Christ for those caught in the world’s snares.
by Chris Armstrong
Posted April 23, 2004

“St. Mugg” and the Wrestling Prophets
A modern British journalist gives us timely words from yesterday’s sinner-saints.
by Chris Armstrong
Posted March 26, 2004

Just a Closer Walk … with the Historical Jesus
Mel Gibson’s movie raises again the question: How much can we know historically about Jesus’ life and times?
by Chris Armstrong
Posted February 27, 2004

The Blood-and-Fire Mission of the Salvation Army
Where did this tuba-playing, kettle-wielding social force come from, and what’s it all about?
by Chris Armstrong
Posted February 06, 2004

“The Bible Alone”? Not for John Calvin!
When we seek answers to churchly and societal issues in the Bible alone, citing the Reformation principle of sola scriptura, we are actually contradicting the Reformers.
by Chris Armstrong
Posted January 16, 2004

Top Ten Stories of 2003 … with a Christian History Twist
Here is our review of “the Christian history that made the stories that made the news.”
by Chris Armstrong
Posted January 9, 2004

Resolutions Worth Keeping
The Origins of New Years’ Resolutions, and One Famous List
by Chris Armstrong
Posted January 2, 2004